{"id":393,"date":"2012-03-26T09:11:19","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T17:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=393"},"modified":"2012-03-26T09:11:19","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T17:11:19","slug":"the-mysterious-benedict-society-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/26\/the-mysterious-benedict-society-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mysterious Benedict Society– review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>The Mysterious Benedict Society<\/a> by Trenton Lee Stewart<\/a><\/p>\n

My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

I read Harry Potter<\/em>, skipped Twilight<\/em>, and haven\u2019t tried The Hunger Games<\/em> yet (although I might. Probably just go see the movie). What is it about kids books that we adults like so much? Maybe it\u2019s because they\u2019re easy to read. I\u2019ll grant you that\u2014 The Mysterious Benedict Society<\/em> is an easy read, although it\u2019s also a younger book than Potter<\/em>, \u2018Light<\/em>, or Games<\/em>. No death, no sex, no graphic violence. Just four kids sent on a spy mission to help defeat an evil villain.<\/p>\n

Trenton Lee Stewart does a good job of taking a few outcasts and bringing them together to illustrate some nice principles for kids to develop: loyalty, honesty, faith, friendship, perseverance, creativity, teamwork. And rather than a dogmatic approach to these ideals, he has his characters bend their own rules and deal with consequences, which I found rather refreshing.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if I cared for the major plot point of the story, the evil villain\u2019s plans and how he was accomplishing them\u2014it had elements of sci-fi and fantasy, but without the science or magic of either. Someone smarter than me could probably show how mind-control machines are a symbol for something significant, but I missed it totally. And the book does drag in a few places.<\/p>\n

But just a few. And other than shifting the point of view from his main character to others on a few occasions, I don\u2019t have any other complaints. Stewart fills the story with all kinds of puzzles and secret little word-plays, which were fun to discover and I\u2019m sure a smart 5th grader would enjoy them as well.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m all for parents reading the books their kids read, and I\u2019m happy to say this is one the parents can get through quickly, and pass on to their children with confidence that there\u2019s nothing in it they can\u2019t handle, and quite a bit for them to love.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart My rating: 3 of 5 stars I read Harry Potter, skipped Twilight, and haven\u2019t tried The Hunger Games yet (although I might. Probably just go see the movie). What is it about kids books that we adults like so much? Maybe it\u2019s because they\u2019re easy to read. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Mysterious Benedict Society– review on Goodreads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-6l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":394,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393\/revisions\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}